Funerals begin for Newtown massacre victims

Kate Suba, left, Jaden Albrecht, center, and Simran Chand paid their respects at one of the makeshift memorials in honor of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Sunday in Newtown, Conn. A gunman opened fire at the school on Friday, killing 26 people, including 20 children before killing himself on Friday.

Veronika Pozner waved to the assembled press as she left after a funeral service for her son, 6-year-old Noah Pozner today in Fairfield, Conn. Pozner was killed when Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Friday and opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children.

NEWTOWN, Conn. » A grief-stricken Newtown today began burying the littlest victims of the school massacre, starting with two 6-year-old boys — one of them a big football fan, the other a mischievous, whip-smart youngster whose twin sister survived the rampage.

Family, friends and townspeople streamed to two funeral homes to say goodbye to Jack Pinto, who loved the New York Giants and idolized their star wide receiver, and Noah Pozner, who liked to figure out how things worked mechanically.

Noah's twin, Arielle, who was assigned to a different classroom, survived the killing frenzy by 20-year-old Adam Lanza that left 20 children and six adults dead last week at Sandy Hook Elementary in an attack so horrifying that authorities cannot not say whether the school will ever reopen.

A rabbi presided at Noah's service, and in keeping with Jewish tradition, the boy was laid to rest in a simple brown wooden casket adorned with a Star of David.

"If Noah had not been taken from us, he would have become a great man. He would been a wonderful husband and a loving father," Noah's uncle Alexis Haller told mourners, according to remarks he provided to The Associated Press. Both services were closed to the news media.

Haller described a smart, funny and mischievous child who loved animals and Mario Brothers video games, and liked to tease his sisters by telling them he worked in a taco factory.

"It is unspeakably tragic that none of us can bring Noah back," Haller said. "We would go to the ends of the earth to do so, but none of us can. What we can do is carry Noah within us, always. We can remember the joy he brought to us. We can hold his memory close to our hearts. We can treasure him forever."

At Jack's Christian service, hymns rang out from inside the funeral home, where the boy lay in an open casket. A mourner, Gwendolyn Glover, said the service carried a message of comfort and protection, particularly for other children.

"The message was: You're secure now. The worst is over," she said.

The funeral program bore a quotation from the Book of Revelation: "God shall wipe away all tears. There shall be no more death. Neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain."

A fir tree opposite the funeral home was strung with paper angels carrying the names of everyone who died, including the teachers.

At both funeral homes, people wrestled with the same questions as the rest of the country — what steps could and should be taken to prevent anything like the massacre from happening again.

"If people want to go hunting, a single-shot rifle does the job, and that does the job to protect your home, too. If you need more than that, I don't know what to say," Ray DiStephan said outside Noah's funeral.

He added: "I don't want to see my kids go to schools that become maximum-security fortresses. That's not the world I want to live in, and that's not the world I want to raise them in."

With more funerals planned this week, the road ahead for Newtown, which had already started purging itself of Christmas decorations in a joyful season turned mournful, was clouded.

"I feel like we have to get back to normal, but I don't know if there is normal anymore," said Kim Camputo, mother of two children, 5 and 10, who attend a different school. "I'll definitely be dropping them off and picking them up myself for a while."

With Sandy Hook Elementary still designated a crime scene, State police Lt. Paul Vance said that it could be months before police turn the school back over to the district. The people of Newtown were not ready to address its future.

"We're just now getting ready to talk to our son about who was killed," said Robert Licata, the father of a student who escaped harm during the shooting. "He's not even there yet."

Classes were canceled today, and Newtown's other schools were to reopen Tuesday. The district made plans to send surviving Sandy Hook students to a former middle school in the neighboring town of Monroe.

Sandy Hook desks are being taken to the Chalk Hill school in Monroe, empty since town schools consolidated last year, and tradesmen are donating their services to get the school ready within a matter of days.

"These are innocent children that need to be put on the right path again," Monroe police Lt. Brian McCauley said.

On Sunday, President Barack Obama pledged to seek change in memory of the 26 people slain Friday by a gunman packing a high-powered rifle. The president slowly recited the first names of the children.

"What choice do we have?" he said. "Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?"

Authorities said Sunday that Lanza was carrying hundreds of rounds of especially deadly ammunition, enough to kill just about every student in the school if given enough time. Lanza decided to kill himself when he heard police closing in about 10 minutes into the attack, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Sunday on ABC.

Across the country this morning, vigilance was high. To keep students safe and calm parents' nerves, school systems asked police departments to increase patrols and sent messages to parents outlining safety plans they said are regularly reviewed and rehearsed.

Teachers girded themselves to be strong for their students and ready for their questions and fears.

"It's going to be a tough day," said Richard Cantlupe, an American history teacher at Westglades Middle School in Parkland, Fla. "This was like our 9/11 for schoolteachers."

Communities were on edge. In nearby Ridgefield, Conn., schools were locked down after a suspicious person was seen near a train station.

Authorities say Lanza shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their home and then took her car and some of her guns to the school, where he broke in and opened fire. A Connecticut official said the mother — a gun enthusiast who practiced at shooting ranges — was found dead in her pajamas in bed, shot four times in the head with a .22-caliber rifle.

Lanza was wearing all black, with an olive utility vest, during the attack.

Investigators have offered no motive, and police have found no letters or diaries that could shed light on it. A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators were looking at Lanza's computer and phone and credit card records. The official was not authorized to discuss details of the case.

Divorce paperwork released today showed that Nancy Lanza had the authority to make all decisions regarding Adam's upbringing. The divorce was finalized in September 2009, when Adam Lanza was 17.

Federal agents have concluded that Lanza visited an area shooting range, but they do not know whether he practiced shooting there.

Lanza took classes at Western Connecticut State University when he was 16, and earned a B average, said Paul Steinmetz, spokesman for the school in Danbury. He said today that Lanza took his last class in the summer of 2009.

Lanza is believed to have used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle in the school attack, a civilian version of the military's M-16 and a model commonly seen at marksmanship competitions. It's similar to the weapon used in a recent shopping mall shooting in Oregon.

Versions of the AR-15 were outlawed in the U.S. under the 1994 assault weapons ban. That law expired in 2004, and Congress, in a nod to the political clout of the gun-rights lobby, did not renew it.

In some of the first regulatory proposals to rise out of the Newtown shooting, Democratic lawmakers and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday that military-style assault weapons should be banned and that a national commission should be established to examine mass shootings.

"Assault weapons were developed for the U.S. military, not commercial gun manufacturers," said Lieberman, of Connecticut, who is retiring next month. "This is a moment to start a very serious national conversation about violence in our society, particularly about these acts of mass violence."

Gun rights activists remained largely quiet, all but one declining to appear on the Sunday talk shows. In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, defended the sale of assault weapons and said that the principal at Sandy Hook, who authorities say died trying to overpower the shooter, should herself have been armed.

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers John Christoffersen, Ben Feller, Adam Geller, Jim Kuhnhenn and Michael Melia in Newtown; David Collins in Hartford, Conn.; Brian Skoloff in Phoenix; and Anne Flaherty in Washington.

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Ken_Conklinwrote:

Have you seen those T-shirts and car stickers with the slogan "Defend Hawaii" showing an assault rifle? They're sold in lots of malls and surf shops. The company selling them even had a special Christmas sale going on at Windward Mall at the same time on Sunday when President Obama was giving a nationally televised speech in the town where the massacre happened. All the "Defend Hawaii" T-shirts show the same AR-15 assault rifle used in the school massacre.
One of their T-shirts shows the Kamehameha statue with the King holding an assault rifle in his outstretched hand. There were huge protests a few years ago when a tourist brochure showed the statue with the King holding a martini in his hand. But nobody seems to protest the "Defend Hawaii" junk. I think the people behind the "Defend Hawaii" company should be "outed" and ostracized, and so should the people who wear those T-shirts or display the assault rifle and slogan on their cars and pickup trucks, and the stores that sell that stuff. For details, read my short webpage at
http://tinyurl.com/c2puv6p

on December 17,2012 | 05:50AM

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NanakuliBosswrote:

Ken is No Defend Hawaii. Ken, you originally from the East coast right? Why all the hate?

on December 17,2012 | 07:20AM

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Ken_Conklinwrote:

"Why all the hate?" You saying my comment shows hate? That's absurd. It's the people behind "Defend Hawaii" who are filled with hate. There's something terribly wrong with people walking around wearing T-shirts with a big picture of an assault rifle on them. And there's something terribly wrong with the haters who think that's perfectly OK. The "Defend Hawaii" gang had a special Christmas sale going on at Windward Mall on Sunday, two days after the Connecticut massacre, at the same time Obama was on TV speaking to the grieving parents at the memorial service in Connecticut. What kind of people do that? And what kind of people buy their junk?

on December 17,2012 | 08:58AM

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johncdechonwrote:

How true, Ken: I am afraid whenever I even SEE a picture of a gun. And like most liberals, I am so frightened I wet myself.

on December 17,2012 | 09:39AM

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8082062424wrote:

You really need to get a life. then you would stop being in every one else's. sad

on December 17,2012 | 07:31AM

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johncdechonwrote:

As we wait for the NEXT school, mall, restuarant or office mass-shooting (yes, they will continue) in the news, do you think those places will start having armed security on-site NOW...or are they going to just continue their official school district (or corporate) policy by NOT doing anything to REALLY and EFFECTIVELY protect their students, employees & customers? I mean, locking doors and telling people to "Duck & Cover" in fetal positions is pretty LAME, right? So what do you think? will they wise up NOW, or still continue their criminal negligence which gets people hurt (and worse)?

on December 17,2012 | 09:41AM

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falsewrote:

Precious babies. How will we behave differently? Our children deserve better than this. Stop the animosity and let's move on to care about the safety for all of us. No more guns.